My savings journey

MaryMurphy

Seen as the forum will be closed tomorrow I'll post this now.

I have spoken with OH and we've set a preliminary target of £2000 to save by July (this is between OH and I) for our wedding fund. Now, this is extremely ambitious and as it's early days yet it's very likely to change.

But it's something to work towards (and excludes the money going into the credit union, which I haven't started yet - shame on me I know, I've been going on about it for weeks now).

So I'll change my sig for now and keep the thread updated if and when things change. BTW we currently have £500 in the account (been saving up bits and pieces for a while now but the £ was sitting there with no real purpose. Now it does).

MMxx

MaryMurphy

OK just scrap my last post. 2 K by June/July is not going to happen.

Two things happened over the weekend. We realised the car is up for MOT soon, and I’ve been invited to a hen party. Both these things have made us remember that the car needs some body work to it, along with a full “check-up”. It’s not to “do it up”, a part of it is rusting away and needs sorted, it’s become visibly worse. And it hasn’t really been checked properly in two years.

Plus, we’ve realised that we have two weddings coming up, which means two sets of hen parties (one of which I’ve already been invited to), two stag do’s (for OH), and last but not least two weddings.

This kind of thing happens only once in a person’s lifetime (well, so you’d like to think so anyway) and I am really honoured we’ll both be a part of these people’s special day and I wouldn’t miss the hen party and wedding for anything.

However, these things are expensive. The upcoming hen do will be a two-night stay at a hotel, plus obviously food (though apparently one meal is included in the accommodation price of 89 euro), drink and travel. I am gutted in a sense as we could have potentially reached 2 K provided our fine balance between saving VS expenses was maintained, and now that’s not happening, regardless of how careful we try to be.

I forgot life tends to get in the way.

On the other hand life is for living and we’d not miss these events for anything.

Already I am thinking of ways to try and save a little bit of money. As the hen do is in the Republic of Ireland I’ll request some Euros via Quidco (which will be handy as we’ll need Euros when we go away in August anyway, so any left over from the hen do can be used when we go on holiday).

I’ll probably do that next month when I get paid again (hen do isn’t till April, so plenty of notice). The problem is that the Republic of Ireland is very expensive and whilst I’ll not be drinking too much (I can’t hold my drink so I know I need to pace myself!) my main issue is food. But it’s only two nights, so I need to stop worrying about this. I am looking forward to it, I just don’t like the uncertainty on how much I’ll need to spend.

Excluding accommodation, would 150 Euro be too much to bring with me? I have no intention of spending it all (after all that’s 75 Euro per day!), and realistically I’d be looking to come home with at least a third of it back (at the very very very least), but I don’t know if in “the real world” I am underestimating my spending for the weekend. I’ve never been to a hen party before (and moreover, I’ve never been in the republic for a girls weekend away!) so don’t really know what to expect, other than inflated food and drink prices.

As mentioned then hen party # 2 will come up at some stage soon too, and OH’s stag do’s.

*so* what needs to happen now is get a bit of money in my Emergency/leisure fund (I know I know, they should be separate, but in a sense I deem my leisure activities as emergencies as they hardly ever happen!) so I can finance all these upcoming events.

I’ll chat with OH so we can have an in-tandem approach on this one. Provided nothing else comes up, as of now my targets for February will be:
- Put £200 into the Wedding Fund;
- Put £100 into Emergency Fund.

I haven’t decided which account to put any left-over money – if there is any – but I’ll deal with that when the time comes.

I almost forgot I also still have the £200 sitting in my account which I haven’t touched yet, so I’ll use the money to finance the various car repairs, which leaves my next pay-packet “free” of that expense. I’ll probably put any left over money from this into the Emergency Fund.

I hope this sounds like a good approach… I think I’m over thinking things again.

MM xx

MaryMurphy

I started to play around with some spreadsheets to help me budget better for unexpected occasions.

I am sick of coming up with plans which are then unobtainable due to something unexpected.

Hopefully it'll help...

MaryMurphy

12 days to pay day woo hoo!

Starting to become slightly addicted with this saving malarkey again lol I’ve been checking my bank accounts via online banking every day now for about a week, and it’s not like the balance has changed or anything!

I’ve also been playing around with Microsoft excel spreadsheets to see if I can create something that will help me maintain a more sustainable approach to saving.

I have various small targets along the way (e.g. have £150 saved up for heating oil, upcoming hen night and so on) over the next few months, and that’ll all go into my regular savings account. Hoping the speadsheet will help me not get sidetracked. I know my sig at the moment says I'll try to have £500 by June, but that'll be divided up amonst various "categories".

I will reach the eIsa target that's in my sig if not this month definitely the next, so I’ll be bang on target. Happy happy happy about this I've given up on the idea of reaching 2 K in my eIsa as I have too many things coming up, it's not sustainable for me.

There’s still light at the end of the tunnel though, we’ve decided to keep the 2K target for the wedding account as it’ll be something a little bit challenging. I would like to reiterate at this stage that OH is contributing towards this 2 K target as well, in case you were wondering how I could put away so much money in such a short space of time!

The weather here is starting to get pretty awful again, so whilst we recently got more coal we'll definitely need to order more heating oil soon. The good thing is that these last two weeks, any night I am working late the OH has been finishing work early now which means we've had the fire lit (meaning no need to use up the heating oil). If we're both working late we tend to just stick the heating on rather than light the fire when we get home.

Also, hope everyone is keeping well!

MM x

Barros

How sad i am - i found £4 today and i came home and my dinner was cooked for me so i didn't have to go to the shops, YAY!

7 days to payday woohooooo

MaryMurphy

lol I found 20 p in a drawer today, was chuffed!

Queen_of_the_Hive

Yay 7 days to payday!!

Looking distinctly possible that im going to be able to save for this months saving pot £443! 7 days to go!!

Mary, yep completely understand about being torn between certain celebrations and bad timed related costs! We just been having that dilema with a good friends 30th birthday surprise. £70 for two of us to join in a cocktail class we just were not interested in. We finally decided to decline and join in for just the meals instead.

On the positive, although no flat sale, now finally in a good position to actually save a decent amount each month. Just means cant enjoy myself as much but worth it in long run.

Tomorrow we are shopping for a bargain pair of curtains to go in bedroom... fingers crossed for a good price!

MaryMurphy

clarissa62 wrote: »

Yay 7 days to payday!!

Looking distinctly possible that im going to be able to save for this months saving pot £443! 7 days to go!!

:T:T Yay that's great! Fingers crossed

Well at least I'm not the only one that's trying to compromise between good times and saving.

LOL when OH and I first moved into our house we ended buying really nasty B&M curtains - BUT they did the job until we could afford an "upgrade"! Hope you find something a bit better

MaryMurphy

Hmmm I have £21 to do me until payday i.e. Monday 31/01 ... (had to get more fuel for the car today - ugh) which is why funds are so low now, but it's the ultimate incentive to keep up the good work! (I still haven't touched the £200 that I've put aside, provided nothing comes up it'll stay that way )

snowqueen555

I can relate, I have a budget, but then something ALWAYS turns up, be it something in my house breaks, someones birthday etc etc.

I too will be following this, to see if you get your 2k by June


Good luck